Brief thoughts

Brief thoughts

Evolution of the Universe cannot be described as simply as theories about the Big Bang initially described. In a presentation the lecturer presented the evolution of the Universe as chain of accelerating or slowing expansions. The exponential and logarithmic expansions of the Universe are very reminiscent of the quantitative and qualitative changes. The question arises, what does the Universe feed on if an evolutionary process is going on in the Universe?

Thoughts while reading a book

In my first approach, the system definition is as follows:

- The system has elements which can be separated from each other.

- The system has a structure i.e. there are a lot of links between components of the system.

- The structure of the system - that is, the network of links between its components – is quite complex.

- The system is open in a physical sense i.e. the system has a special behavior with his environment.

- Behavior of a system is consistent i.e. a given input of environment triggers the same or at least similar output off the system.

I am reading a book of Alexander George and Daniel J. Velleman¹

I could not write a review because I have not finished the book. This book is not about the history of philosophy and I would not either call it philosophy book because it includes so much mathematics and logic with tasks as well.

So I do not mark my writing out for a review but I rather mention some thoughts of which arose while I was reading this.

Contents:

1. Sets and Classes

2. Potential and actual infinity

3. Law of excluded middle

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¹ Alexander George & Daniel J. Velleman , Philosophies of Mathematics

(Review)

I had ambivalent feeling reading Paul Johnson's book on Socrates.

On the one hand I am very happy to read about my favorite philosopher, and I agree completely with the title of the book, Socrates is really a man for our times. I add it to him that his timeliness never ceased. His enormous effect was permanent. Every age Socrates was a role model of a moral and clear life, he was an ideal of consistent free thinking.

Paul Johnson’s bias feeling for Socrates would be acceptable for me if he would not have infallible statement in relation to the philosopher and the age of Socrates.

Brief thoughts

1. The Edification of the Past

Abstract:
Karl Popper has true in big generality: The Time did not verify the things working for a long time, only the Time did not yet falsify them.

2. Complexity & Beauty

Somewhere I read: At first the complexity makes itself attractive by its beauty, and finally its beauty makes complexity clear.

And recently I read:

„Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.”¹

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¹ David Gelernter, Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology

Thoughts on books of Kolakowski

I do not agree with Kolakowski when he concludes that

„.. perfection implies goodness is an arbitrary assumption”¹

First of all, it would be necessary to think about what means really perfection. Kolakowski do this when he writes that

“To be perfect in the first sense seems to mean to achieve the highest possible degree in the given ladder of being …”²

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¹ Leszek Kolakowski, Metaphysical Horror (Basil Blackwell, 1988), page 80

² Pre-cited op, page 80

Thoughts on books of Kolakowski

The "all religions are one" statement can mean two things according to Kolakowski¹:

- “There is a stock, however limited, of identifiable and expressible important beliefs which are common to all religions and in which all worshippers recognize themselves.”²

- “…all religions are culture-specific expressions of fundamentally the same human experience…”³

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¹ Leszek Kolakowski, Metaphysical Horror (Basil Blackwell, 1988)

² Pre-cited op, page 105

³ Pre-cited op, page 105

Description of the Lorentz transformation with a special scalar and skew-scalar product

1. Summary of antecedents

I wrote earlier¹ that all the three number-plane one can define a special symplectic form in the same way:

ω(z₁,z₂) = Im(z̄₁z₂) = x₁y₂ – x₂y₁                             (1)

This is equal to 0 if x₁y₂=x₂y₁ i.e. y₁/x₁=y₂/x₂, so if the two number-vectors are collinear.

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¹ See «The "natural presences" of the symplectic camel»

Skew-scalar product¹ and scalar product on the planes of two-element numbers

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¹ A nondegenerate bilinear skew-symmetric 2-form is called skew-scalar product.